• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Renters gain as Alpha Mead’s Rent4Less gets $1m lifeline

Renters gain as Alpha Mead’s Rent4Less gets $1m lifeline

To the gain of prospective tenants, Alpha Mead’s rental scheme, Rent4Less, has received $1 million lifeline through a private placement bond for the scheme. The scheme is designed to support individuals and small businesses with flexible, monthly pay-as-you-use rent for homes and offices.

The Senior Secured Private bond issue is another milestone in the series of the company’s expansion strategies to increase access to shelter and establish the culture of monthly rent payment across Nigeria and Africa’s housing and office markets.

The $1million bond issue or funding is coming as a result of an outstanding early growth of the product and the trust that the investment community reposes in Alpha Mead,” explained Wale Odufalu, managing director of Alpha Mead Development Company (AMDC), a subsidiary of Alpha Mead Group.

Odufalu explained further that Rent4Less has proven, over the last 12 months, that it is a product designed as a response to the economic challenges that came with the pandemic. “Because we are a member of a large real estate group, we have the opportunity of drawing insights from the experiences of other businesses within our group,” she said.

One of those insights, according to her, is that the pandemic has reduced the pocket size of most people and businesses and everyone has to reprioritize, disclosing that they thought about how they could show to the market that their “We Care…” brand essence is not just a platitude.

“At one of our strategy sessions, we had a eureka moment: shelter is one of the basic needs of man; so, if we can take the stress of the lump sum annual payment away from people and businesses at a time like this, we would have been solving a major problem,”she reasoned.

Read also: Alpha Mead determined to deepen monthly rent, raises $1m for Rent4Less

Continuing, Odufalu said, “over 80 percent of our growing population lives in rented accommodation and we are happy that we have not just solved a major problem with Rent4Less, we have even proved, within a very short time, that we can accelerate growth and replicate this success across Africa. We thank Cardinalstone for getting on this journey with us.”

Rent4Less has had its impact on developers and investors and Odufalu noted that as a company with deep interest in real estate development, AMDC was conscious that the product must also be beneficial to landlords and real estate investors.

Under the company’s Guaranteed Rental Income Programme (GRIP), she assured that Rent4Less would ensure landlords enjoyed early and consistent economic benefits on their assets, increase occupancy levels, and also leverage its group’s expertise in facilities management to ensure that assets remained in valuable condition.

In all of this, the company’s goal is to demonstrate that monthly rent was possible in Africa. Those safe, secure and comfortable homes or offices should not be the exclusive preserve of those who have huge funds to either buy or pay annual rent.

“As basic as shelter should be, and despite its immense impact on our social architecture, not everyone in Nigeria, and indeed, a significant part of Africa, can afford a safe, comfortable and secure accommodation.

“This is not because developers have stopped building. In fact, a drive around some of our cities will reveal an interesting paradox of scarcity amidst plenty, with low occupancy rates on the one side and unmet demands for housing and offices on the other,” Odufalu noted.

She assured that the $1million would help them to close this gap between the scarcity and plenty, adding that it would also help them bring more buildings to the market in Nigeria, and expand their footprint in Ghana where they have just launched.